Health Care Policy and Practice: Promoting Environments for Quality Care - The Institute of Medicine report Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses underlines the critical role played by nurses in assuring patient safety and delineates eight work environment characteristics to protect patient safety (Page, 2004). The organizational change that is needed to develop and sustain a culture of safety is decidedly linked to the well recognized shortages in the healthcare workforce. We are proposing a one-day leadership conference, Health Care Policy and Practice: Promoting Environments for Quality Care. The purpose of the conference is to scrutinize the tensions generated by forces requiring a culture of safety and those derived from looming workforce issues, consider strategic responses, and set the research agenda to enhance rapid implementation of the IOM committee recommendations. We propose a conference that brings together nursing leaders and their interdisciplinary colleagues in order to extend the work of the IOM Committee on the Work Environment for Nurses and Patient Safety. This one-day conference will provide opportunities to engage with the implications of the committee's recommendations, with particular attention to implementation of the five specific areas most directly affected by the nursing shortage: Leadership and evidence-based management structures and processes; Effective nursing leadership; Adequate staffing; Organizational support for ongoing learning and decision making; Mechanisms that support interdisciplinary collaboration. The objectives of the conference are to: 1. Analyze implications of the recommendations of the IOM Committee on the Work Environment for Nurses and Patient Safety in light of workforce shortage challenges; 2. Identify practical and strategic recommendations for the rapid implementation of the recommendations of the IOM Committee on the Work Environment for Nurses and Patient Safety; 3. Synthesize the current literature on work environment and patient safety in the context of the nursing shortage and advance a research agenda; 4. Disseminate the synthesis, analysis, and recommendations to nurse researchers, nurse educators, health care professionals, policy makers, and the public. Each speaker will provide a 12-15 page manuscript that is ready for peer review. These papers will constitute the foundation of a supplement to be published in a leading journal. During his or her presentation, each speaker will summarize the main points in their respective papers. Each panel respondent will have fifteen minutes for his or her comments. An additional fifteen minutes is scheduled after the keynote and following each panel to provide opportunity for the conference participants, who also bring important expertise, to further develop the points raised by the invited speakers/panel members and to shape the emerging agenda. These discussion periods will be tape recorded and summarized for inclusion in the published supplement. The presentations on organizational perspective and final commentary will also be summarized in the published supplement.